History of Erebus
The Birth of Time In the beginning there was the One creator. Such was his power that all he spoke and thought was Truth. When first he spoke he made a place of glory and a throne from which he could sit and view all that was. This place he named Heaven and his throne was called Order. The One spoke of a blue orb that rested on the arm of his throne. This orb he named Temporance and to it was given the power to control the flow of time. The Time of Angels It was now that the One began to speak of new creations. Each one he created he gave a unique name and the twin gifts of life and free will. Each creation was created differently but to the whole he gave the name Angels. These angels were divided into 21 precepts and a single angel was appointed to be the head of each precept. Each Angel was made to serve the One and to serve the creations that would come after. For the first time other voices were heard as they began to sing and praise the One. :*Lugus- Angel of Light (Sun) :*Sirona- Angel of Wisdom (Spirit) :*Bhall- Angel of Fire (Fire) :*Nantosuelta- Angel of Faith (Enchantment) :*Nemed- Angel of Life (Life) :*Amathaon- Angel of Fertility (Creation) :*Junil- Angel of Justice (Law) :*Arawn- Angel of Death (Death) :*Oghma- Angel of Knowledge (Metamagic) :*Danalin- Angel of the Water (Water) :*Dagda- Angel of Balance (Force) :*Kilmorph- Angel of the Earth (Earth) :*Sucellus- Angel of Growth (Nature) :*Tali- Angel of the Air (Air) :*Camulos- Angel of Peace, who would become the Angel of War (Chaos) :*Aeron- Angel of Strength, who would become the Angel of Rage (Body) :*Ceridwen- Angel of the Stars, who would become the Angel of Magic (Dimensional) :*Mammon- Angel of Foresight, who would become the Angel of Greed (Mind) :*Esus- Angel of Trust, who would become the Angel of Deception (Shadow) :*Mulcarn- Angel of Ice, who would become the Angel of Winter (Winter) :*Agares- Angel of Hope, who would become the Angel of Despair (Entropy) The Birth of Man Heaven was full of many wonders which the angels spent centuries studying and praising. When the One felt them ready he commanded them to take flight outside the boundaries and to fill the vacuum with creations that mirror those of Heaven. To them he gave the power of creation. So did the countless angels set off in every direction, creating as it pleased them to create a host of worlds true and good that would serve the One. When the creation was done there was a countless array of worlds and a nearly endless variety of life upon them. Each angel created a world of their own preference and all the angels contributed to a common world, called Erebus, which was their greatest creation. Although all manner of life and substance had been created in the world the angels wished to create something greater than their individual aspects. Together they agreed to create a race of men that would contain a gift from each of them. This race would be directly descended from the angels and Nemed agreed to sacrifice his precept and become the father of this new race. His precept, that of Life, was given over to Arawn and the angels created an immortal female named Gabella to serve as his wife. The One entered creation where he stood upon a white slab and viewed all things. Seeing this work as good, the One took back the power of creation from the angels. The Fall of Agares Unknown to the other angels, and some say even to the One himself, Agares was not willing to lose the power of creation. Knowing he could not hope to keep the power and that he would be left only with the power to manipulate what was already existing he hatched a plan. Using the power of creation, while he had it, he created infinite plains of raw elements, air, earth, fire, water, life and death. At the center of these infinite reaches he placed gems of each of these elements which he had secreted out of heaven itself. When the power of creation was lost to him he still had enough matter and energy that he could go on creating until the end of time. Once the power of creation was taken from him Agares continued creating in his own world, which he called Nyx, with his infinite plains of elements. He created Nyx not in the fashion of heaven but as he desired. The createures of this world were not told of the other angels or the One, and Agares commanded they worship him alone. Nyx was a world painted in black and gold, a shadowy relfection of heaven, where the precept of hope controlled every aspect. Dreams, desire, worship and wane ruled the shallow creatures that inhabited the beautiful world. The other angels noticed that Agares continued creating. Agares claimed that it was cruel to take the power of creation away from them and that the One was jealous that their creations had outshone heaven itself. Six angels sided with Agares as they were eager to regain the power of creation and he showed them his infinite plains and how to use them to create. These angels were Camulos, Aeron, Ceridwen, Mammon, Esus and Mulcarn. It was then that the One intervened. Seeing Agares’s blasphemy he sought to remove it from all of creation. But by this point Agares’s taint had spread through creation, nothing existed that would still exist if he removed the evil from it. So pervasive was Agares’s corruption that if the One entered creation it would be destroyed by his holiness. Unwilling to destroy creation the One condemned all the Angels out of Heaven, to live among creation until the day he returns to separate the good from the evil. The One tasked the angels still loyal to him with protecting creation and guiding it toward enlightenment until the day he returned. Those angels that followed Agares opposed the One’s decree and took up arms against the angels loyal to him. From this point on the angels that fell were known as evil by men, those that opposed them and were charged with protecting mankind were known as good and the 7 tasked with maintaining the functions of creations besides man were known as the angels of neutrality. After throwing all of the angels from Heaven the One sundered the path between Heaven and Creation so that none but him could pass between them. In response to this all the angels, except Agares, created a host of angels to serve them. The first they created was their archangel, and behind them thousands more to spread their will across creation. The archangels were: :*Amathaon- Maponos the Young :*Sucellus- Cernunnos :*Bhall- Brigit the Shining :*Kilmorph- Goibniu :*Lugus- Baelious ("fortune") :*Aeron- Odio's Prison (who was imprisoned by Kilmorph during the Age of Dragons) :*Dagda- Cassiel :*Mammon- Hastur, the Lord of Nightmares :*Junil- Sabathiel :*Oghma- Embarr ("imgination") :*Camulos- The Avatar of Wrath :*Nantosuelta- Splendor :*Ceridwen- Kanna, Mistress of Pain :*Sirona- Pelian the Suffering :*Esus- Iaegus :*Tali- Leucetious, Bringer of Storms :*Arawn- Gyra and Basium, twins :*Danalin- Condatis :*Agares- None (until the later creation of Hyborem, Lord of Balors) But Agares, not satisfied to play the One's game, did the opposite. He returned to Nyx and destroyed everything there, every creature he had created, every monument that had been built. In one burst of power the beautiful world of Nyx was reduced to ash. The world lies to this day barren, it is called the deepest hell and none would suspect that it was once a world of surprising life. Creation In the beginning all manner of natural animals and plants existed in creation, much as in our world. Gabella mirrored the rebellion of Agares by refusing to endure her role as a subordinate to man. She fled from Nemed and retreated to the Bair of Lacuna. Further generations of men have the gift of immortality removed from them. But still their divine birthright makes their soul immortal even if their body fails. It is this connection to the divine, through the angel of Nemed, that allows men to channel the power of the angels and allows their souls to pass to them when they die. At the 6th generation of men, Os-Gabella returned and stole two children, Alexis and Flauros, to raise as her own. These children became the first vampires, killing other to sustain their life throughout the ages. The First Age - The Age of Dragons Unable to overcome their differences the gods begin to war across creation. As in all things the gods' desires become physically manifested and their aggression was acted out by powerful creatures that battle against each other. Dragons, giants, great elementals and the gods themselves unleashed incredible magic and threaten to destroy creation with it. Mountains are created and destroyed, chasms and lakes were created like gaping scars. The wars between the angels were fought across the faces of the worlds while men and other races huddled in caves, fearful of the power being unleashed around them. It was during these days that the dragons were born, mighty creatures empowered by the angels to fight in their battles alongside them. During this time hundreds of angels succumbed to the whispers of Agares. These fell from the service to the angel that had created them into the service of Agares. To this day Agares has more angels in his service than any other angel, but non of them were created by his hand. Even his archangel. Hyborem is a corruption of another. Cerunnos, the great horned one, was the archangel of Sucellus. He dared to attack Agares directly. Agares picked up the powerful archangel and showed him visions of himself dark and corrupted. So powerful was the vision that it became real, splitting Cerunnos into two creatures. They were identical in form but the new creature, which Agares named Hyborem, was dark in aspect and colored in blodd. Hyborem and Cernunnos fought but neither could defeat the other. As such, even the archangel of Agares was stolen from another, he is a percersion of the natural. Sucellus and Danalin remain larfely out of the fighting. Instead each tends to a group of men tht venerate them and that become changed byu the close presence of their god. For Sucellus these men become the Ljosalfar, elves born to nature. For Danalin these men become the Aifons, men who can breathe water as well as air. Mankind, the greatest pride of the gods, was almost threatened with extinction. Immanuel Logos, a tribal leader, began the order of the Elohim at the close of this age to care for those injured in the Godswar. Seeing the devastation they were wrecking on the lands, and that they would have nothing to show but bloody battlefields when the One returned Dagda commanded the fighting to stop. With the aid of Arawn, Kilmorph and Oghma he threatened to fight against whoever acted aggressively in the conflict. Dagda had enough angels that agreed with him that the others knew it was pointless to fight him. the gods meet and the compact is formed, an agreement that the gods would withdraw and only interfere with creation through cdetain limited means. As a symbol of this alliance a weapon of great power was made, the Godslayer, a weapon with the power to slay a god, and the weapon was given over to the most powerful of human men, a warrior named Finner. This was a power that none of the gods had on their own. For some of the compact does too much. Basium, the archangel of Arawn, rebels and continues his battle against the infernals regardless of the compact. For others it does too little. Cassiel, the archangel of Dagda, rebels believing that the gods should withdraw completely from creation instead of using men to fight their battles for them. [[Cassiel enters creation to teach men to ignore the will of the gods. The days of the Age of Dragons were days of huge supernatural battles, powerful storms, earthquakes and volcanoes. Its heroes were brave men without the benefit or magic or knowledge, who were little more than savages trying to survive in a world they didn’t understand and where death came strong and swift. The Second Age - The Age of Magic The war still continued but more subtly than before. Without the destruction of the Godswar man is able to form civlizations. One empire of men is created, Patria, and the people learn from and trade with the Ljosalfar and the Aifons. It was during these days that the angels began to share their gifts with the races of the land. For the first time healers and druids began to appear. Each of the angels began to teach their followers in different ways but the most powerful of these teachings came from Ceridwen, she sought to teach men the powers of the angels themselves, the men called it magic. The Patrian nation becomes strong. Basium battles are mostly in hell, Cassiel is revered among the Patrians who are more philosophical than religious. The children of Os-Gabella, vampires who have learned to leech life from others to sustain their own, are a scourge to mankind and the only real predators to humanity. It is the most peaceful time in man's existence. During this time Kheldon Ki sculpts the dwarvesfrom his prison home and they are given life by Kilmorph. They tunnel out over a few generations, exploring the underworld. They settle on hills near the human lands. After abuse by corrupt Patrian merchants, many will retreat back to their tunnels. forming the unified nation of the Khazad. Other tribes stay on the surface, craeting the Luchuirp, open-sky Dwarves. Kylorin becomes the king of the Patrians. He is a wise and popular ruler, loved by his people. When his wife betrays him, Kyorlin considers suicide by jumping from the top of his palace. Ceridwen, the queen of pain, talks to him there, offering him another deal. That she will give Kyorlin eternal youth and have his wife be resurrected in a new form each time she dies so that he may find and remarry her without the memory of her betrayel. The price is that Kyorlin will worship Cerdiwen and leads the Patrians according to her desires. He agrees. Cerdiwen gifts Kylorin with eternal youth and teaches him magic as well. He becomes the first archmage and begins teaching other how to use magic to enforce his ever more corrupt rule over Patria. In a few generations his rule is absolute and vile. Sorcerer practice bizarre experiments, creating creatures like manticores, chimera and trolls and rule the fiefdoms in their control as gods. Kyorlin directly trains 21 students and puts each in charge of a seperate magical school. These were the names of Kyolorin students: :*Air- Greysun :*Body- Kezef (whose experiments killed all the animals on the Grigi plains) :*Chaos- Carnivean :*Creation- Majen (elven) :*Death- Barbatos :*Dimensional- Os-Gabella :*Earth- Jenkin :*Enchantment- Velgyr :*Entropy- Asmoday :*Fire- Mikel Dylantyr :*Force- Paimon :*Ice- Badb :*Law- Soqed Hozi :*Life- Leucetios :*Metamagic- Gastrisu :*Mind- Perpentach :*Nature- Herve :*Shadow- Wode ({elven]) :*Spirit- Laroth (who would create his empire in the underworld) :*Sun- Tamesis :*Water- Trenton Majosi In these days there was no good magic, only goodly priests and very powerful evil wizards. There is only so much magic on a plane and the men did not have the angels ability to reach out to separate planes for their power. This wasn’t much of a problem because the magic of the plane was enough to power the relatively few wizards that Ceridwen had taught to channel it. But as more wizards learned to channel magic it became harder for any individual wizard to cast the more powerful spells. While the amount of wizards were few, these were the days of the most powerful of wizards ever to exist. They were evil and created many evil artifacts, some of which still exist to this age. Fire was a holy weapon in these days and the goodly mans only defense against the unholy power of magic. Although it was rare for a wizard to fall, when they did it was almost always to the flames of the righteous. The days of the Age of Magic were days of relatively peaceful times but always with strong undercurrents of superstition and fear. Spells could destroy cities or swallow seas, and magical weapons could make a farmers son into the most powerful of heroes, but it always had a cost. Kylorin eventually becomes regretful of what he has done to the empire of men and prays for help. Nantosuelta answers those prayers and teaches him how to be an even more powerful mage. Kylorin uses that power to lead a rebellion in his own empire. He sets about subduing or killing those sorcerers who refuse to repent, though some escape his purge. Perpentach was a master of mind and a favored student of Kylorin. Kylorin was unwilling to kill him, imprisoning him instead in a dungeon in the Tower of Eyes, guarded by unthinking golems. But Perpentach was more talented than Kylorin suspected, and was able to send his consciousness out wandering further and further from his prison. Searching, creating illusions and controlling minds miles from the dungeon in a process that strained him to the point of fracturing his mind. But he drew hundreds of men to his prison, made them fight and defeat the golems, release him, and declare him their ruler. The war splinters the empire with Kylorin leading good religious forces against the creations and unholy magic of the sorcerers. By the end 10 human nations have been formed: the Elohim, keepers of memories and guardians of the sacred parts of the world, the Bannor, keepers of the sacred fire and the greatest enemies of the sorcerers, the Kuriotates, who dwelt on the edges of the empire and were said to be guarded by a great power, the Malakim, desert nomands and ment of faith, the Lanun, traders and seamen, the Hippus, horselords and mercenaries, the Grigori, the followers of Cassiel, the Balseraphs, led by the sorcerer Perpentach, the Illians, who dwelt in the tundra and ravaged lands, and the Calabim, who became reuled by Alexis and Flauros. Creation settled into its new form. There were still many powerful evils in the world. Sorcerers who still hid in the land and monsters who roamed the wilderness now that their masters were dead. There were many jobs for adventurer willing to recover lost artifacts or investigate hidden areas. And there were wars. It was during this age that the Aifon Trenton Majosi set out on a quest to save his people. He returned with the only salvation possible, a ritual that would allow Danalin to enter creation and save his children. Rather than returen to the Godswar, Trenton didn't perform the ritual and the Aifons and Trenton Majosi were destroyed. The loss of his children from creation caused Danalin to withdraw, falling into a sleep from which he hasn't yet woken. Agares, the first to fall, whispered to Bhall, the angel of fire, and she eventually succumbed to his words. This was the end of the age of magic. Bhall fell from heaven and that night the sky rained fire. Men loyal to her were transformed into hideous orcish races, becoming the Clan of Embers. The capital of the Bannor empire, which held her greatest temple, dropped with her into hell. That ritual uncovered by Trenton Majosi had found its way into the hands of the Illians. They had no fear of a Godswar since Bhall was responsible for opposing their patron diety Mulcarn. With Bhall fallen, their lord was unopposed and this dispossessed people saw an opprtunity to have more than the scraps left for them by the rest of humanity. The world was on fire and although many seers and prophets immediately knew when the ritual began, few empires could afford to send armies to stop the ritual that was being performed. Only a single tribe of the Khazad known as the Luchuirp rallied an army. They were golem makers so the burning food supplies didn't affect their army as strongly as other nations. The Luchuirp assailed the Illians capital with the full force of their bathhle machines, but they were too late. Just as they broke through the city walls, Mulcarn entered creation and with a whisper the Luchuirp army was wiped out. A permanent winter set in across creation. The Third Age - The Age of Ice There were three events that occurred almost simultaneously and marked the end of the Age of Magic. The events were so catastrophic that the progress made in the Age of Magic was nearly forgotten and is the closest Creation has come to destruction since Dagda forced the other angels to make their pact. It began with the preparation of Mulcarn to break the Compact and enter the worlds again. The angels of good had decided that they would each be responsible for watching one of the angels of evil and it was the angel of fire’s (Bhall’s) responsibility to be watching the evil angel of winter. But Bhall was suffering from the persistent temptations of Agares himself. When Bhall gave into Agares’s temptations, she threw off the order of the One and choose instead the chaos of Agares. On this day fire turned against men and rained from the sky on thousands of worlds. Immediately the sorcerers who had feared the flames found them easier to control than any other element and the flames became the sorcerers most powerful weapon. At this same time one of Ceridwen’s most powerful sorcerer's, a man named Kyorlin turned from his loyalty’s as well. Tired of the evil that surrounded him he found some soft spot in his heart that Nantosuelta gently tended to. At first broken to sorrow for his past actions he was quickly moved to righteous anger. He prayed and preached for all those who had also fallen to evil to turn away from it, and when that failed he used the power of his sorcery against them. This was the first time magic had been used by men for good. The angels of good were pleased by the battles Kyorlin fought and won in their name, and the many converts that followed him instead of Ceridwen. They blessed him and deemed that men should have the power of magic and Nantosuelta was selected to guide men in it. As soon as Bhall fell Mulcarn, who had been waiting for that moment, moved into the world. Sucellus went to stop him and the two battled on the tundra of a forgotten world for days. Sucellus was beaten and since Mulcarn couldn’t kill him he broke Sucellus into 7 parts and scattered him throughout all of Creation. With the angel of nature gone and the angel of winter in the worlds and flush from his victory an Ice Age set in across Creation. The Ice Age had a wide impact but lasted only a few hundred years. Nantosuelta gathered the bodies of Sucellus that Mulcarn had spread across creation except for the one that Mulcarn kept himself, the Heart of Sucellus. This age came to an end the day Kyorlin appeared in Mulcarn’s earthly throne room, having traveled across half a dozen ice covered worlds to get there. Kyorlin was by this point nearly 450 years old and his magic, the result of both the direct teachings of Ceridwen and Nantosuelta, was said to be the more powerful than any mortal has ever known. He was there to do what a god a failed to do, kill Mulcarn, and when he announced it the entire plane echoed with Mulcarns laughter. Laughter that ended when Mulcarn noticed the Godslayer hanging at Kyorlin’s side. Mulcarn was killed and Kyorlin gave the Heart of Sucellus over to Nantosuelta who put Sucellus back together and restored the broken god. Once again nature bloomed and the ice receded but Sucellus was changed from the event, during the time his body was torn apart his spirit walked Arawn’s land of the dead with the mortal departed spirits. When Sucellus returned he brought with him the powers of Nature and Death as well. The days of the Age of Ice were days of chaos and constantly changing conditions. The twin cataclysm’s of raining fire and the sudden ice age were to much for many civilizations to bear. Life on entire planes was extinguished while others had to drastically change their lifestyle to survive. Dwarves and Elves alike retreated far underground to escape the chill of the surface and the battles of the Underdark began during this age. Then at the end of this Age, the events leading up to Kyorlin’s battle with Mulcarn, make for the best of legends. The Fourth Age - The Age of Rebirth When the ice receded life once again returned to areas that had left vacant. Man was forced to rebuild again but did so a bit stronger, and a bit more knowledgeable than he had before. There were more sorcerers than there had ever been, but that wasn’t to say they were common. Because of this any individual sorcerers power didn’t compare to the legendary powers of the sorcerers of the Age of Magic. The elves suffered a split and although most have returned to the sunlit surface some made a pack with darker forces and opted stay in their deep home. It is now the beginning of the Age of Rebirth. The Compact of Dagda has broken into two factions one dedicated to Dagda and another dedicated to one of his lieutenants, and angel known as Cassiel who argues that angels should follow the example of the One and turn the backs on Creation and allow it to succeed or falter on its own, not as part of their schemes. Only in retrospect will the point that marks the move into the next age be known. It is suspected that the next age will be known as the Age of Enlightenment and be marked by a dramatic polarization of good and evil, law and chaos which will be followed by the return of the One and the judgment that ends Creation. Some ages predict that that Age of Enlightenment is already upon us and point to the nearly fanatical discipline imposed by the Order as evidence, a fanatical devotion so intolerant of infractions it is beginning to be difficult to distinguish it from the planes most evil dictatorships. Evil cults seem to be taking root in even the most peaceful of farmland villages. Adventurers are sorely pressed to keep up with the activity as new creatures are spawned and ancient creatures are awakened to terrorize the land. In the shadows it is whispered that the Godslayer may not be capable of killing a god forever and Mulcarn may return, sages fear that like Sucellus he may return more powerful than he left. Other rumors speak that a group of men have found the gems at the center of the Elemental planes that Agares stole so long ago. They say the Gems of Death, Water and Air all are being held by mortal men, now with as much power as the gods themselves. It is said the outer planes mirror this activity, the long dormant war of belief on the planes has taken on new urgency, every planar border city taken is celebrated as if those commanding the war know the battle is almost done. Man has proven that he does not need the angels to survive, his growing maturity is removing the innocence that protected him long ago.